The Island Villa_The perfect feel good summer read

by Lily Graham

  ‘What changed, then?’

  She looked at him, raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought you knew. He died. I was meant to marry my cousin, Rafael. You know, the man you’re pretending to be.’

  He stared at her and took a sip of water. His mouth had turned suddenly dry at the thought.

  ‘You were meant to marry Rafael?’

  She nodded. Then she looked at him and said, ‘So as soon as you are well, we can discuss the wedding.’

  His eyes bulged, and he started to choke.

  She rolled her eyes, and then helped by pounding him on the back. ‘Don’t worry, you still have about six to eight months to get used to the idea,’ she said, her dark eyes looking deeply into his.

  He blinked, and Esperanza burst out laughing. ‘I’m joking, of course. Rafael and I were engaged, yes, but my family doesn’t expect you take on every part of his identity. Don’t look so concerned.’

  Though she wasn’t quite sure how they were going to explain that to their neighbours. Most people knew she was meant to be marrying her cousin Rafael. She’d worry about that later.

  As he breathed an audible sigh of relief, she narrowed her eyes, then tossed her dark hair over her shoulder, whistling for her dog Flea to join her, and quirked an eyebrow. ‘Like I wanted to marry you.’ He had the grace to look a little embarrassed, and started to apologise, but she didn’t stay to hear it. She was aware of her own beauty – it was a simple fact of nature, and for the most part she didn’t dwell on it (one of her few redeeming qualities, according to Cesca) – still, she thought, he needn’t look that relieved. Surely there were worse things in this world than the idea of marriage to her? In fact, there were quite a few men in the village who could think of nothing better and would swap places in a blink of an eye if only they had half a chance… but she managed somehow to stop herself from telling him that.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Formentera, present day

  I found Big Jim at the Blues Bar later that night. I’d found myself pacing the house, turning over the things that the woman in the market had said, wondering if I should be worried about having Emmanuel in my home. He didn’t seem dangerous. But looks, I supposed, could be deceptive. I sighed. It could also be about something else… perhaps she had been simply warning me about a philandering husband. Well, that presented no harm to me. I was nowhere near thinking about getting involved in a relationship yet.

  But I wanted an answer, or at least to put my mind at rest, about the man who was spending so much time in my home. Particularly if we were going to be friends. I’d had enough drama over the past year, and I didn’t need to welcome someone into my life who would cause me harm.

  Big Jim was sitting at the bar, his hands dipping into a bowl of salted nuts, his jaw working while his grey head bobbed along to the sound of Bob Marley. He paused his chewing and gave me his big, Texan grin when he saw me, opening his arms wide for a hug.

  I stepped into it. I needed one.

  ‘Well, hello kiddo, what brings you here this fine evening? Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘That’ll be great,’ I said, taking a seat on a bar stool, ‘Just a vodka and tonic for me.’

  ‘Sure thing.’

  ‘Sue not here tonight?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Flying solo. Art group,’ he explained.

  I nodded, gave him a half grin and then took a sip of the drink the bartender handed me.

  ‘Something on your mind?’ he asked, watching me, his blue eyes locked on to mine and his long grey ponytail swung over his shoulder.

  ‘Yes, actually. I was hoping I’d run into you tonight. There’s something I need to ask you about the renovator you sent me, Emmanuel.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, his face brightening. ‘Good guy, ain’t he? Your place coming along, I hope?’

  I bit my lip. ‘Yes, he’s a great worker, and I’m happy you say that – that he’s a good guy, but…’

  He looked at me with a frown and I explained what had happened to me, about the woman who’d come over to warn me.

  To my surprise, Big Jim waved a hand in dismissal. ‘Oh that? Tall girl, long brown hair, kind of athletic-looking?’

  If that was code for drop-dead-gorgeous body, then yes. Athletic. ‘Yeah?’

  He shook his head, dipped his hand into the bowl for more nuts and gave me a grin. ‘Yeah, don’t worry about that.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked in surprise.

  ‘Well,’ he sighed, pausing his chewing as he considered his words. ‘To tell you the truth, kiddo, it’s just like some people won’t let a man be the better man, you know? Won’t see it when someone’s trying… and well, Em’s trying. No one who knows him and has seen him these past few years can deny that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  He sighed. ‘Look, it’s his story to tell. All you’ll hear round here are rumours and not a lot of it is true. What I can say is that I was there at the start and he’s paid for what he did. A few times over. The fact of the matter is the only person he ever hurt was himself. That’s all I’m saying.’

  My mouth fell open. ‘Jim, you can’t leave it there! What do you mean, he was the only one who got hurt? Who else was there? Should I be worried?’

  He sighed, then pinched the bridge of his nose, like he’d said too much. ‘No, you shouldn’t be worried. Okay, well. What I mean is that there was an accident, his kid was in the car and his wife, and well, he’d been drinking…’

  I gasped. ‘No!’

  He shook his head. ‘They’re fine. They survived. Em was the one who got the worst damage, all these scars, man, pretty bad all down his chest. Anyway, that accident shook him straight. But it ended his marriage, I mean all things considered, I don’t think he blames his wife for that, he understood why she left – though it was kind of cruel to make sure that he never saw the kid afterward, especially when he’s done all that work to pull himself straight. He’s sober now, has been for years, but I dunno, it’s like some people – like his wife’s sister Claudia, that’s who you ran into by the way – it’s like she just won’t accept that he’s not the same guy any more. I think that’s what eats him alive, really.’

  I went home that night thinking about what Big Jim had told me. It made so much sense now when I thought about how hard Emmanuel seemed to work himself. How sombre he was. It was like he was still punishing himself, and I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him as a result. Also, a sense of relief that I wasn’t welcoming someone dangerous into my home… but I still had so many questions.

  I sat in the kitchen at my new table, the one Emmanuel had helped me to find when I’d seen the rare, almost fun side of this serious man, and touched the urn with James’s ashes in.

  ‘What would you do?’ I asked. ‘Would you try speaking to him about it? Do I tell him that I know? Will that make things awkward between us now?’

  I wasn’t surprised when, not long after, I could have sworn he said, ‘I’d go to bed and stop worrying about it.’

  So that’s what I did.

  In the morning, the sun came streaming in and I turned over and saw to my surprise that I hadn’t brought James’s ashes to bed with me. It was the first time I had done that since the funeral.

  I twisted the ring on my thumb, and thought about what Maria had said when I’d told her about James, about what had happened.

  At ninety-five she knew a lot about death, having outlived most of her own family.

  ‘But you keep them here,’ she’d said, pressing a fist into her chest as if it would enter her very heart. ‘They never go far from there. Sometimes, little Ben will come into the kitchen, hearing me speaking, and ask me who am I talking to, and it’s one of them. I’m speaking with my family. They never really leave you.’

  I couldn’t help but hope that was true.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Formentera, 1718

  Cesca could hear the woman’s screams before she entered the finca. An old woman, with a ben
t back, dressed in black, rushed out as soon as she saw her, relieved that she had arrived. ‘Oh Señorita, please, she can’t lose another one, it’ll kill her!’

  Cesca touched the old woman’s lined face, nodded and ran inside. The doctor, Señor Garcia, was already there. ‘It’s a breech,’ he said simply. She could see the fear in his brown eyes. She was the only one who could. It was important now for her to act calm. Chaos only led to fear and that led to panic and mistakes.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, putting her basket down. ‘Señora,’ she said to the old woman, ‘We’ll need a few more rags, and some warm water. Can you get that for us?’

  The woman nodded, looking relieved to have some task to occupy herself with.

  When the old woman was out of the room, Cesca knelt down next to the labouring woman’s legs and waited for the doctor to give her an update.

  He indicated that he was going to try to turn the baby with his fingers, encourage it to turn into the normal birth position.

  ‘Marianna,’ she said, getting up to clasp the pregnant woman’s hand. ‘We are going to try saving this baby, okay? But the doctor will have to do something that will feel a bit strange, perhaps painful.’

  Cesca looked at the doctor. His eyes told her that painful was an understatement. She took a breath. ‘You will need to be brave, and work harder than you ever have in your life. Can you do that?’

  Marianna nodded, tears slipping down her cheeks. She looked ready to burst into proper crying.

  ‘Save your tears, Señora,’ Cesca said. ‘You need the strength for the baby – use that for when you need to push but only when we tell you to, okay? It’s very important.’

  The woman nodded and Cesca returned to the doctor’s side. She whispered to him, ‘Have you done this before?’

  ‘Just once,’ he said.

  ‘Did the baby survive?’ He shook his head, and Cesca felt her heart clench. ‘We have to try.’

  He nodded. They had no choice.

  The doctor’s hands were too big, and he wasn’t getting anywhere. All he was doing was making the mother cry out in pain. He looked at Cesca. ‘You can reach further, your hands are smaller.’

  ‘Me?’ She was shocked. ‘I don’t know what to do!’

  ‘I’ll help you,’ he said. ‘Quickly now, before it’s too late and we have no choice but to deliver this child as a breech.’

  She inserted her fingers and turned the baby as gently as she could, the doctor describing to her all the while what she should be feeling for, while Marianna roared in pain. At last, she felt the baby move. ‘It’s turning! It’s moving.’

  They breathed a sigh of relief. Breech babies had a very low chance of survival, but with this one having turned, Marianna would have a normal birth, and the risk was much reduced.

  At last they helped to bring a healthy baby boy into the world. Marianna fell back on the bed crying and gasping out of relief and sheer fatigue.

  Cesca and the doctor dealt with the afterbirth while Marianna’s mother helped to clean the baby, swaddling it in a blanket and placing it next to her. She stared at her son in amazement.

  By the time Cesca got home it was early morning. She’d been on her feet for most of the night and it had taken its toll; all she wanted was a quick wash and to get in her bed and slip into a deep sleep.

  She hadn’t been that scared or that excited by medicine in the longest time. Working with the doctor always made her feel like they were part of a team. She hadn’t spent much time wondering about their marriage. What it would mean to actually be his wife.

  She tried to picture it. His kind, gentle brown eyes, the way that they always looked at her with such encouragement. It wouldn’t be hard to be his wife, she thought. She’d learn so much.

  She frowned as she turned over. Of course there was more to a marriage than that, she knew. She wasn’t naive – she hadn’t just spent the evening helping a woman to give birth without knowing a little about how it happened. And she’d grown up on a farm, after all. But she couldn’t imagine that part of the marriage. She tried to imagine it, kissing him, but it felt odd to think of him that way. Did it matter, though, that she didn’t desire him like that? Few wives felt that way. Her parents had grown to love each other despite their own arrangement, and she loved Señor Garcia in her own way. Before she knew it a pair of pale blue eyes swam before her eyes, followed by a soft smile, and she opened her eyes fast in the dark, her heart pounding, a faint flush beginning to creep up her neck as she realised just who she wouldn’t mind kissing. She was picturing Benito’s face. She lay awake for some time afterwards, despite her earlier fatigue, trying to put the thought out of her head, and when she did finally fall asleep it was with a frown on her face.

  When she woke up she heard a moan from her mother. She went to check on her and was concerned to find her looking tired and unwell.

  ‘Is it your stomach again, Mare?’

  Her mother nodded. Her hair was in disarray and there was sweat beading on her forehead. She looked ashen. She’d long suffered from digestive complaints, but over the years it had been getting worse. Cesca would have to speak to Señor Garcia about giving her mother something stronger or seeing if they should be changing something in their diet. She hoped there was something he could suggest, something she hadn’t thought of.

  For now, she made her mother a tea with peppermint and calendula, something soothing to combat the pain.

  When she saw that Benito was awake, his pale blue eyes looking at her in concern, she looked away, her face colouring at her thoughts from the night before.

  ‘Is your mother all right?’ he asked, his smile warm, concerned. She sat next to him, handing him the cup of tea she’d made.

  ‘I’m not sure – she’s had this stomach complaint before, but…’ She looked away, and he touched her hand. ‘What?’

  She moved her arm back, her skin burning from his touch, and swallowed. ‘It’s just… it keeps happening. I hope the doctor will have something for her, something to help. I hate seeing her in pain.’

  He nodded. ‘I’m sure he will.’

  Cesca stared at him, trying to will herself to go back to bed. She was still very tired. But talking with him first thing in the morning, when it was only the two of them awake in the house, had become the brightest part of her day, the part she looked forward to most. She bit her lip, knowing that she shouldn’t think that way. Shouldn’t want nothing more than to sit talking with this strange, handsome man just after dawn, as the sun began to shine through the small window, making his beautiful blue eyes look as if they were lit from within, when she was promised to another.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Formentera, present day

  I told Isla about James on a cool night as we walked along the harbour, sharing a bottle of wine she’d bought from the bar. I’d gone to hear her sing and afterwards we’d carried on talking well past closing time.

  Her sandals dangled in her hand while we stared at the boats and the amber lights glinting off the water, and she looked at me and then grimaced.

  ‘I didn’t want to ask you about it – not until you were ready – but I’m here, if you want to talk.’

  I took a sip from the bottle she offered and nodded. ‘Thanks.’

  I wondered if Big Jim had filled her in. I guessed he must have. I was relieved, in a way, not to have to rehash the whole sad tale.

  As we walked I told her about how I was just trying to make sense of it all.

  ‘What I’m finding hardest…’ I sighed, hating to admit it, ‘is being alone.’

  I hadn’t been alone since I was nineteen years old, and the truth was I was having a hard time with it.

  Something told me that carrying my dead husband’s ashes into every room I visited – apart from the bathroom – wasn’t exactly the best form of coping with his death.

  She nodded, took the bottle from me and took a swig, while she stared at the ships. ‘Yeah, being alone isn’t easy.’

 
; I looked at her in surprise. ‘But you make it look so easy.’

  She did. She lived alone in a flat that she rented from the owner of the Blues Bar, and from what I could see lived a pretty amazing life on her own terms, selling her beautiful seascapes, playing in a band, living a kind of carefree, hippie life. She had the sort of effortless grace and cool I could only ever dream of achieving.

  She laughed, and her shoulder-length hair swung behind her as she fixed me with a look of disbelief. ‘Me? Okay with being alone? Well, I suppose now. But it took for ever. It almost killed me when Sebastian and I broke up. We were together since we were kids, you know. I thought we’d get married, have babies, all that jazz, you know… till one day he told me that he wasn’t in love with me any more and that he wasn’t sure if he ever had been. It was in the middle of a tour, when we were both feeling just so over the whole show-business thing, and I guess he decided to get honest about that as well.’

  I stared at her. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Hey, it happens. I mean, it’s not as bad as what you went through.’

  ‘It still hurt.’

  She nodded. ‘Yeah. Anyway, I’ve never really minded my own company but being single was something I had to get used to, that feeling of being by yourself most of the time. You just got to push through it.’

  ‘I’m working on that,’ I admitted. ‘It’s a work in progress.’

  ‘You’ll get there. And I mean, look how far you’ve come.’

  I nodded. That was true. Just a few weeks ago, just being in anyone’s company had felt like torture. The only way I had felt I could survive was by keeping everything down to a minimum – interacting with people, life, the future. Perhaps that was slowly changing.